Month: December 2017

He was the best trick of all; precious and incredible like a shiny, black top hat that swallows the white rabbit gently, and with ease. Fragile, yet so strong when it came to a face off with the stage. He was not real of course, and he disappeared, leaving a space in my heart like one of those matchboxes already empty with nothing inside to … Continue reading La Magia è Finita by Laura Mega

White lady Dressed in death Playing games Green blues on a flute Black man dressed in life Playing symphonic rock on a drum A bus pulls up Vomiting out passengers Lining them up on a red dot For worshiping the god of death Does it make any sense Unless you are already there? Continue reading White Lady by Jake Cosmos Aller

Tolga was a man, like all men, terrified of his feelings. The sound of his name was somewhat Chinese, but he was originally from Cappadocia. Each time he would have sex with a girl, he would sit on the bed holding a tiny box with his left hand, while the right one close to his chest would take out his fragile heart and place it … Continue reading Heart-Shaped Box by Laura Mega

Looking into the irises of the doctor, you think of salmon leaping from a stream in all their breathless inquiry, which is what happens when you look into the watercolor eyes of Christ⎯ It’s always the same thing: The salmon certain in uncertainty, their scales sheening like oil spills left in a parking spot, a little too bold for my taste. Also, it’s like avoiding … Continue reading Abortion Clinic by Domenic Scopa

Although the point is gone (the eye moonlighting on some dollar bill) I know that pyramid (the neighbor’s roof) is mine. Power lines and bluish clouds rush straight at me from the vanishing point, also known as Sam’s Club. The spot where I’m kneeling is sacred now, though yesterday it was a source of great anxiety. One blanket on the sofa and one on the … Continue reading Earlier by Timothy Robbins

In Rasputin’s day it could have been with wine, the intermingling of magic and mayhem, ribbons of blood, a drowning of senses. For some it was nuclear winter and monkeys launched into space, gymnasts and chess masters with dizzying moves, depressed masters of fiction in itinerant bloom. Once in a Moscow apartment I had twelve shots of vodka over dinner, skipping every other tumbler, a … Continue reading How Russia Hacks You by Martin Ott

As it’s been stated several times since the publication of Kristen Roupenian’s “Cat Person” in The New Yorker, short stories aren’t typically the sort of medium to go “viral,” the way, say, a child biting another child’s finger can. But then, no one of the present epoch had ever seen the “salacious” value the written word could still invoke in the hearts of straights perhaps wanting … Continue reading “Cat Person”: Kind of the Girls of Short Stories

I was as surprised as anyone when Marianne Martindale, our most famous and best-loved prosecutor, the only real somebody from our town full of nobodies, announced she was running for mayor. She was just the kind of candidate we needed, after the run of dweebs and bozos we’ve had as long as I’ve been living here, which is since the late 70s, when, come to … Continue reading The Dead Mall: A Story for Roy Moore by David Leo Rice

Sneaks under shadows lurking in corners ready to rear its head folded in neat lab reports charting white blood cells over edge running wild. Or hiding along icy roads when day ends with seagulls squalling through steel grey skies. Brake belts wheeze and whine snapping apart careening us against the long cold night. Official white envelopes stuffed with subpoenas wait at the mailbox. Memories of … Continue reading Fear by Joan McNerney